FAANG software engineer salary 2026

§The cross-company spread is larger than the cross-level spread

The common reading of FAANG compensation treats the companies as a single tier and asks how much you get paid at each level inside that tier. The Levels.fyi 2026 medians do not support that framing. At the Senior level (the unified ladder midpoint), the cross-company spread runs from $310K at Microsoft to $647K at Databricks: a 2.1× ratio between the lowest and highest paying companies. Inside any single company, the Mid-to-Senior spread is typically 1.5× to 1.7×.

In other words, which company you join matters more than which level you reach inside it. A Mid engineer at Stripe ($277K) earns within striking distance of a Senior at Microsoft ($310K). A Senior at Databricks ($647K) out-earns a Staff at Microsoft ($340K) by nearly $300K per year.

The calculator above runs this comparison live across all 8 companies at the level you pick, so the spread is visible immediately. This article covers what drives it.

§What the 8 companies pay at each level (Levels.fyi 2026)

Total compensation medians, sourced from Levels.fyi submissions over the last 30 days as of late May 2026. All figures in $K USD per year (base + annual stock vest + target bonus).

Three patterns stand out.

First, Stripe and Databricks have pulled ahead of legacy FAANG at senior tiers. Stripe L4 ($766K) is roughly equal to Google L6 ($635K) and Meta E6 ($711K), one level lower. Databricks L5 ($647K) clears Apple ICT4 ($339K) by nearly 2×. These companies are private (still pre-IPO at the time of writing), and large parts of the package are in stock that may or may not pay out at expected values. If the stock works, the comp is real; if it does not, the comp on paper exceeds the comp in hand.

Second, Microsoft pays significantly less at every level above Entry. At Senior the gap is $310K vs an 8-company average around $480K, a 35 percent discount. The Microsoft compensation philosophy explicitly trades cash for stability and work-life balance. Whether that trade is worth it depends on individual circumstances, but the gap is consistent year over year.

Third, Netflix has a unique compensation shape. Its publicly stated philosophy is to pay "top of personal market" and to keep base salary high while limiting stock grants. The result is that Netflix engineers receive most of their comp as cash rather than equity. Entry and Mid hires are rare at Netflix (the company explicitly skews senior in recruiting), so those numbers in the table reflect a smaller sample of unusual hires rather than typical career paths.

§The level translation table

The unified ladder in the calculator maps to company-specific level designators as follows.

Three details matter when mapping yourself onto this ladder.

Company progression rates differ. Reaching Senior at Stripe (L3) typically takes 5-7 years; reaching Senior at Microsoft (L63-64) often takes longer because Microsoft is a larger, slower-promotion environment. Years to title is not portable across companies.

Amazon's SDE II and SDE III are unusually narrow rungs. The Amazon ladder compresses Mid and Senior compared to other ladders, which is part of why Amazon's L6 Staff jumps to $649K (closer to Google L6) while L5 Mid is much lower.

Microsoft's L60-67 numbering is internal. Other companies treat L5 as a Senior level; Microsoft uses L63-64 for the same scope. Do not benchmark Microsoft "L5" against anything; that is Microsoft's intern level.

§Comp composition has shifted toward stock

At every company except Microsoft and Netflix, the largest single line in a Senior+ compensation package is annual stock vest, not base salary. This is a relatively recent shift; in 2018 most FAANG senior packages were still base-dominant.

Take the Meta E5 breakdown from Levels.fyi 2026 as representative: base $229K, stock $222K/year, bonus $27K, total $478K. The base is the smaller half. The Google L5 breakdown is similar: $230K base, $170K stock vest, $25K bonus.

This matters in three ways. The stock vest is not guaranteed dollars: it is dollars at the time of grant divided by four (typical four-year vest), and the dollar value at vest depends on the share price at vest. If the stock falls 40 percent during your vest period, your "Total Comp" line in Levels.fyi was lifetime nominal value, not realized cash.

Second, stock refreshers (additional grants given annually starting year 2 or 3) make a meaningful difference to whether your nominal TC holds up after the initial grant fully vests. Companies that grant generous refreshers (Meta, Google) maintain higher effective TC over years 4-8 than companies that do not (Amazon historically, though its February 2022 base salary cap raise softened the year-4 drop).

Third, public-company comp values are much closer to realized comp than private-company comp values. Stripe and Databricks list very large stock components ($440K and $565K respectively at Staff level), but those are valued at the most recent private round price. A liquidity event has to occur (IPO, secondary sale) for the stock to convert to cash. The risk-adjusted comp at Stripe is lower than the nominal Levels.fyi number.

§How to read the calculator

The calculator runs four selectors and two sliders, then produces a year-1 TC breakdown plus a six-year projection.

Selectors:

• Company. Picks the comp row.
• Level. Picks the column. Unified across the 8 company ladders.
• Location. Geographic multiplier (see below).
• Specialization. AI/ML adds 20 percent. DevOps and SRE add 12. Security adds 10. Frontend and Web subtract 5 (oversupplied segment).

What you see in the result:

• Hero. Year-1 median TC at your intersection.
• Stats. Base, stock vest in year 1, target bonus.
• Pie. Year-1 comp mix.
• Line. TC projected across the next six years at your refresher rate.
• Bar 1. Your selection vs the other 7 companies at the same level.
• Bar 2. Career progression at your chosen company across all 5 levels.

§Geographic adjustment

Levels.fyi medians are US-aggregated and weighted toward Bay Area and Seattle submissions. Seven explicit locations, multipliers verified against Levels.fyi Google L4/L5 cross-location data:

• Bay Area: baseline.
• NYC: 4 percent discount.
• Seattle: 7 percent.
• Boston: 5 percent.
• Austin: 20 percent.
• Denver: 15 percent.
• Remote (US): 20 percent.

These reflect both COL realities and the comp-band policies FAANG-tier companies use. Meta and Google apply a roughly 10 percent remote haircut. Amazon historically does not.

The discount applies to base, stock, and bonus uniformly. The cross-company bar chart stays at the Bay baseline so you can benchmark against peers without your location skewing the picture.

§The year-by-year chart and the refresher slider

Initial RSU grants at FAANG companies vest 25 percent per year over four years. After year four, the initial grant is fully vested and stops contributing to TC. What sustains TC past year four is the refresher: an annual additional grant, typically a fraction of the initial grant's value, that starts in year two and also vests over four years.

The refresher slider controls that fraction. The math behind the chart:

• Year 1 stock = initial vest
• Year 2 stock = initial vest + first refresher vest (refresher rate as a fraction of initial)
• Year 3 stock = initial vest + two refreshers
• Year 4 stock = initial vest + three refreshers (peak)
• Year 5 onward = four refreshers, the initial grant exhausted

At a 25 percent refresher rate, year-5 TC equals year-1 TC: the initial grant exits and four refreshers exactly replace it. Below 25 percent, you get a year-5 comp cliff: TC falls. Above 25 percent, TC grows past year four.

What value to set in practice:

• Meta and Google. Historically refresh at roughly the rate that maintains TC. 25 to 30 percent is a reasonable scenario.
• Amazon. Uses a backloaded vesting schedule (roughly 5/15/40/40 percent over four years rather than even quarter-by-quarter). Similar year-4 dynamic. In February 2022 Amazon doubled the base salary cap from $160K to $350K explicitly to address engineer retention.
• Microsoft and Apple. Sit in between.
• Netflix. Uses cash rather than stock. Refresher rate is irrelevant.

Move the slider to test scenarios for your specific offer.

§Private companies get a risk-adjustment slider

For Stripe and Databricks (the two private companies in the table), the calculator surfaces an extra control: Stock realization probability.

Levels.fyi reports stock at the most recent private round price. That value only converts to cash if a liquidity event occurs and the public market values the company at or above the private round.

The slider starts at our default estimate:

Stripe: 60 percent. February 2026 employee tender ran at a $159 billion valuation, up from $91.5 billion a year earlier. No public S-1 as of May 2026. Active secondary lets holders realize partial positions.

Databricks: 50 percent. Series L closed December 2025 at $134 billion, after the December 2024 Series J at $62 billion. Analysts now expect an S-1 in the second half of 2026.

Move the slider down for a more conservative read, up if you believe the next valuation step will be higher.

When a private company is selected, the hero, the stats, the pie chart, and the year-by-year line all switch to the risk-adjusted figure.

The cross-company bar stays nominal: that is how Levels.fyi reports it, and how you should benchmark offers against your peers without distortion.

This is not on Levels.fyi. It is the closest you can get to a realistic comparison between a Stripe L4 offer and a Google L6 offer without proprietary cap-table data.

§Compare two offers

The button above the calculator switches it into a side-by-side view: Offer A on the left (your current selection), Offer B on the right. Each panel has its own complete set of selectors, sliders, results, and projections.

When you toggle compare mode for the first time, Offer B inherits Offer A's state so both panels start identical. Change either side to surface the spread.

Where this matters most:

• Stripe L4 versus Google L6. Same Senior-tier seniority on paper, very different comp shape. Stripe nominal is higher; Stripe risk-adjusted at 60 percent is comparable. The chart shows which is actually larger at your risk tolerance.
• Same company, different location. Meta E5 in Bay versus Meta E5 in Austin. The hero numbers diverge by roughly 20 percent. Useful when negotiating a relocation.
• Same level, different refresher. Two identical Google L5 offers, one assumed at 20 percent refresher, one at 30. The year-6 line chart spreads visibly. Useful for stress-testing optimistic recruiter math.

The cross-company bar in each panel still benchmarks against all 8 companies at that panel's level, so you keep the apples-to-apples context even while comparing two specific offers.